Prompted By U.S., U.N. Drops Carbon Targets

South Korean environmental activists hold a globe during a demonstration in Bali.

Photo: Ed Wray / AP Photo

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The United Nations has reportedly dropped its ambition for defining mid-term greenhouse gas limits at the global warming summit in Bali.

According to Reuters, which quoted a delegate, the U.S. effort to avoid hard targets was successful, and the U.N. has dropped its call for 25-40% reductions from industrialized nations by 2020. Japan and Canada also supported the U.S. position that the agreement being negotiated in Bali – a roadmap for future negotiations – not include numbers.

The negotiations will, however, continue through Friday, when the delegates are expected to unveil the agreement.

In the meantime, environmental groups are renewing their accusation that the real aim of the Bush Administration delegation is to avoid all agreements on climate, as it plans to host its own meeting for major polluters, separate from the U.N.

In other news from Bali:

• The U.N. and scientists warned, again, that failing to address global warming now would lead to conditions that would make violent political conflict more likely in many parts of the world, according to Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

• U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said developing nations like China and India must accept responsibility for their current rate of carbon emissions, even though the industrialized nations of the world have a greater "historical burden," according to Deutsche Presse-Agentur. Ki-moon arrives in Bali Tuesday.

• Britain's greenhouse gas emissions are 20% higher today than they were 20 years ago, contrary to government pronouncements about modestly declining pollution, according to an Oxford University study cited by The Daily Telegraph. The key difference? The Oxford study accounts for "aviation, shipping and the carbon content of imports," as the Telegraph put it.

• Four children who had won contests in their home countries of England, Sweden, Indonesia and the Philippines campaigned in favor of action on global warming, arguing that the choices made today would have the greatest effect on generations to come, according to Chinese state-run media.

• The finance ministers from 37 countries will call for developing a stronger global carbon market, as a result of their negotiations on the sidelines of the Bali summit, according to the Japan Economic Newswire.

• The European Union and the United States agree that the world should eliminate tariffs on solar panels, wind turbines and other clean energy technologies in order to facilitate their use in developing nations, according to Irish Times.

• To preserve its forests, Indonesia's Papua province will ban the export of raw timber and crude palm oil, according to Business Times Singapore. The surprise announcement is important because Indonesia is the world's third-largest polluter of greenhouse gases, owing to the rapid decline of its rain forests.

• Investment in renewable energy is up between 15-60%, according to the U.N. Environment Program, and that growth, according to Asia Pulse, is due in great part to the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol, which set binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions for those industrial countries that ratified it. The U.S. is the only major industrial power not to ratify the treaty, which will be succeeded by whatever agreement emerges from the roadmap agreed to in Bali this week.

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